In a broad sense, there are 7,000 islands in Luzon, which can be divided into three parts: Luzon in the north, Misha suburbs in the central region, and Mindanao in the south. Unlike the Indochina Peninsula, which is densely populated and well-developed in economic and cultural development, it is sparsely populated and has a low level of civilization. Before the Ming and Spanish people came one after another, Luzon, the most developed island was just in the slave city-state stage, and the indigenous people on Misha and Mindanao were even in the primitive social stage.

After defeating the Spaniards, the Nanyang Company took ten years to complete the conquest of the entire Greater Luzon, but the migration and development of the population were limited to Luzon and the Misha tribe. Mindanao, which was densely covered with primeval forests, was not included in the six prefectures and forty counties under the Governor General's Office of Luzon.

Since the King of Luzon passed away, the Governor General of Luzon has become the supreme ruling institution here. For the Beijing court, it is too far and insignificant. Therefore, the Governor General has not been replaced after ten years of establishment. If it were not for the support of silence, it would not even be worthy of the most basic civil service system. However, wild has the benefits of wildness, and can be planned and unrestrained... Design. Luzon is divided into three major regions, Manila and the Tortoiseshell Mansion are commercial and trade zones, with processing and export and service industries as the pillars. The hilly and mountainous areas in the north are industrial and mining areas, with mining as the pillar industries, and the plains in the south and central and western regions are agricultural areas, mainly planting economy, planting sugarcane, rice, tobacco, abaca, etc. Because the Misha Ministry is also mainly plantings, silent investigations can only be carried out on the Luzon Island, and you can see the whole picture.

Ten days after leaving Manila, I came to the Pearl River Mansion in the central part of Luzon. This area is dominated by plains and its plantation economy is second only to the Yangtze River Mansion near Manila. On the road, I saw rice fields and sugarcane plantations on both sides. After walking for an hour, I would see a Hakka walled house-style earthen building, standing in the ocean of green plants. It was a residence built by the Southeast Governor's Office for immigrants.

The reason why this defensive residential style was chosen is based on the actual situation in Luzon.

Before large-scale immigration, the entire Luzon Island was a wasteland except for a few city-states near Manila. Even after twenty years of development, there were still large areas of primeval forests, insects and snakes, and many wild animals. Moreover, due to the characteristics of the plantation economy, immigrants could not live in cities and live very scattered, and they were easily attacked by indigenous people who hated the Chinese. The army of the Governor's Office and the Nanyang Company could not be stationed at every immigration site at all times. Therefore, how to ensure the safety of immigrants became the top priority for success or failure.

When I saw this problem in my letter, I immediately thought of the Hakka clan that impressed him when I was suppressing bandits in Zinan. The harsh living environment forced the Hakka people to attach great importance to defense. They built the house into a fortified city that is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and lived in tribes.

The earthen building has wells, granaries, livestock pens and other living facilities, which gives the Hakka people sufficient security. He has also witnessed with his own eyes how these large defensive buildings remained unmoved under the fierce attack of the government army, so he proposed that the Southeast Governor's Office could build such a house for immigrants.

This small residential house with good defense and is conducive to enhancing ethnic cohesion has become popular with immigrants once it appeared. More than 10,000 such walled houses have been established in Luzon for more than ten years. It can be said that Hakka walled houses are a key factor in the plantation economy and even the success of immigration.

Before sunset that day, the team arrived at a village 80 miles away from Zhujiang Prefecture City. The guards at Daqian Station had already communicated with the residents here. When they learned that the large army had brought their own forage and dry food and only needed to provide some hot water and food for the nobles, the village chief happily opened the village door and welcomed the arrival of the silent group.

Only when you get close to it will you find that these inconspicuous earthen buildings are actually extremely tall and majestic, with a height of four floors.

For this kind of building, defense must be considered first, without exterior windows on the bottom and the second floors. A narrow slit is opened on the three floors, and an enemy platform is added to the large windows on the four floors, so that you can shoot from a high place. The only weak point is the entrance, but then the sky light carefully looked at it. I saw that the hardwood thick door was covered with iron sheets, and the door can be fixed with horizontal bars. The door can be installed with a fireproof water cabinet. If there is no red cannon, it is difficult to break. It is enough to ensure the safety of residents.

There are more than 30 households, more than 400 Chinese people in this village, and forty-five indigenous women who are used as shi girls. Apart from the harvest season, it is rare for anyone to come here, and it becomes as lively as a festival. According to the village chief's instructions, the residents began to set fires and prepare hot water for more than 1,000 people. The children ran outside and looked at the outsiders curiously and muskets on their shoulders.

The village chief asked the men to place a large army, but he asked to go to the fourth floor of Xuanbi in silence.

After washing and changing clothes, I sat in the living room and drank a cup of homemade hot cocoa in the house. I felt much warmer when I was silent.

At this time, the slightly dark-skinned girl served the fragrant roast chicken, roast goose, nap meat, and even a roasted ru pig. In this way, the village chief kept saying that the hospitality was not good. Although silent did not like meat, the guest still expressed his sincere gratitude as the host, and happily enjoyed this sumptuous dinner with the village chief and several old people.

Although I am not very interested in meat, Chen Mo likes their homemade sugar cane wine. Especially for years of age, it has a unique and unparalleled flavor. I drank it for a long time and tasted it. It turned out to be the taste of rum.

The wine table is the best place to eliminate strangeness. With the strong affinity of silence, after drinking for three rounds, I became friends with the people on the table. Of course, for the first generation of immigrants, when they meet new friends, they must be proud and talk about their hard-working entrepreneurial process.

Unlike the spontaneous immigrants of Chen Laoshuan, the residents of this village were recruited by Nanyang Company in Guangdong. The elderly still remember the advertisements of Nanyang Company, as if as long as they come to Luzon, everyone can become a landlord with thousands of hectares of fertile land, and they can become a monument without farming and hard work. They are half attracted by this powerful publicity, and half are also because of bandits. Because the government can't get through the intensive taxes, they have to leave their hometowns even if they stay in China. They are not going to try their luck in Nanyang.

In fact, in the first decade of naturalization in Nanyang, more than 80% of the immigrants were from Fujian and Guangdong. Because the two provinces were mountainous, the area that could be cultivated was pitifully small, and the huge population pressure forced many people to make another way to make a living. Among the huge risky immigrants, only these immigrants who could not continue to live would lose the least and get the most.

When he was silent in the cabinet, he once talked about this matter with the Guangdong governor who came to Beijing to report his duties. The governor complained that "this immigration frenzy like an infectious disease" said that he could not understand the phenomenon of Fujian and Guangdong flocking to Luzon to clear the wasteland.

Silence said to him: The so-called desolation is relative. For the people in the mountainous areas of Fujian and Guangdong, the land of Luzon is not desolate." But as far as the humble person knows, most of those who immigrated were only enough to eat and drink, and did not get rich as they were in the propaganda. "Is everything difficult at the beginning?" Silence sentence made the governor feel ashamed: "The reason why life of food and clothing can make them leave their hometowns is because in their hometown, they cannot even get food and clothing. After the governor reported his work, he was transferred internally, and a colleague who was open-minded took over his position.

To be honest, the difficulties faced by this generation of collective immigration are smaller than those of Chen Laoshuan.

Many, first of all, in terms of survival rates, in order to avoid the inaction of precious immigrants, Nanyang Company strictly limited the number of people riding on the immigrant ship and equipped with doctors to almost eliminate deaths during the voyage. After the immigrants arrived in Luzon, they would have a month of adaptation time and then allocated to various prefectures. This made the death rate of immigrants due to illness within one year only 132 to one, which is absolutely a miracle whether compared with the past or with European immigrants.

Nanyang Company will also help new immigrants through the difficult period between embarking on this land and getting the first agricultural harvest, providing them with necessary materials and technical guidance, and teaching them how to protect themselves in plantations far away from the city... Of course, all this is paid, but it can be paid in the harvest installments for the next ten years.

However, other people's help can only be considered external force. If you want to turn a wasteland into a dense plantation, you still have to rely on hard work year after year. They first drifted the waterway and planted rice. After solving the problem of eating, they began to try to grow tobacco, because this crop is the simplest and the fastest effect is. However, seven years later, the land where the tobacco planted was severely degraded, forcing them to plant another high-profit cash crop, sugarcane.

However, the labor of sugarcane gardens is so heavy that ordinary people cannot bear. Although they imitate others and used some indigenous labor, they have not escaped from labor. Year after year of hard work and year after year of rich harvests have dissipated the sorrow of staying away from home. People have also tanned their faces due to years of hard work, but joy always fills everyone's face. They have never been as full of hope for the future as they are now.
Chapter completed!